PG: Wings of Desire Film

Screenshot from Wings of Desire film

This week, we analysed a film, Wings of Desire and read a chapter from The Act of Seeing by Wim Wenders on Box of Broadcast. YouTube version is here. The film is a 1987 romantic fantasy about immortal angels who populate Berlin and hears the thoughts of humans but stays invisible to them. One of the angels, Damiel, falls in love with a trapeze artist, Marion, and he decides to become mortal in order to experience the human sensory pleasures/ pain such as taking a bath, enjoying foods, seeing in colours, rubbing hands together to generate heat, broken skin and getting black fingers from reading the newspapers. 

The cinematography of this film is shot in monochrome from the angel's point of view and colour from the people's point of view. A fun fact is: the name of the French circus in the film: Alekan Circus was named in Henri Alekan's honour – the film’s cinematographer. The German- and French-speaking film has English subtitles which does interferes with the enjoyment of the film. Filming technique such as panning the camera in shots to mimic the angels’ elevation might be overdone. Juxtaposition of real video documentation (e.g. dead children) in the film suggests the desire to evoke emotions from its viewers. Angels perched on places where one normally wouldn’t sit is suggestive of their immortality. I speculate that the amount of narration supersedes direct speech in the film is due to the practical reasons for sound technicality. This black and white footage evokes nostalgia by showing records of the past, making memories in the film and using film as memory. 

Referring to Wenders' chapter on The urban landscape from the point of view of images, the parallel he draws between the development of images and of cities (p. 96) is that they both grown out of proportion, become colder, more distanced/ alienated/ alienating, more commercially oriented. It's the saturation of images in cityscapes. He likens images to addiction to drugs and cautioned overdose of them. Berlin has a lot of empty spaces due to the aftermath of war and nothing much to see. Visitors can see through the space like how they see through time, just like in a movie. The eyes and the mind are allowed to wander. He is convinced that film should have gaps between imagery to allow us to see anything else other than what the film wants to show us. Thus, the storytelling exists and comes to life in the mind of the viewer or listener (p.99). 

It makes me think about how people described themselves as storytellers or sharing the origins of businesses' stories. It appears that these people do that to not let images or noise drown in the flood of the others and to not let them become victims of the ongoing competitiveness and the overwhelming spirit of commercialisation by telling a story. 

References

Attie, Shimon, ‘The Writing on the Wall, Berlin, 1992-93: projections in Berlin's Jewish quarter’. Art Journal (2003, Fall),  74-83.

Wenders, Wim, 'The urban landscape from the point of view of images'. In The act of seeing: essays and conversation (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), pp. 93-101.

 

Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire (1987), on Box of Broadcasts at: https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/000BEFF8?bcast=134925775